Ware Shoals is a community to the south of Greenville County of the Piedmont Republic. The community is at the corner of the former counties of Laurens, Greenwood and Abbeville along the Saluda River. It previously resisted incorporation by authorities in the Republic. It was largely an assortment of heavily guarded neighborhoods before joining the Republic in June 1995. It would be another sixteen years, though, before the city (only a few miles outside the nation) would become a part of the newly formed and enlarged Williamston County. Since mid 2011 the town's honed militia has served well at the southern "gateway" to the Piedmont.